The lines have become repetitive when it turns to conversations about college football.
“It’s a business now,” “change is happening whether you want it or not,” or some variation along these lines is very prominent.
One aspect that has not changed in the era of the transfer portal and NIL dominance is the annual Week 1 FCS Opponent scheduling that has become a hallmark of teams looking to pad win totals and try to make it through their first game unscathed.
While the Power Four and FBS certainly have experienced plenty of change of late, the FCS is steadily moving along, unchanged for the most part, and still exhibiting one of the most exciting postseasons in the modern era.
As several teams square off against nearby FCS opponents, let’s break down the FCS, both literally and in an overview of one of college football’s most unique gems.
Everything You Need To Know About the FCS
The FCS stands for Football Championship Subdivision, which never made much sense even before the highest division in the sport, the Football Bowl Subdivision, decided to implement a playoff.
Formerly known as Division 1-AA, the FCS is the second-highest division of collegiate football in the NCAA organization.
Founded in 1978, when the NCAA had no previous divisional structure, the FCS features 129 teams in 13 conferences and holds its own postseason playoff separate from Division 1-A or FBS. The size of the bracket has increased from four teams originally in 1978 to 24 teams as of the 2020 season.
The FCS is the highest level of college football with an NCAA-sanctioned national championship, and as such, it was named the Football Championship Subdivision.
What Conferences Belong to the FCS?
A few of the conferences at the FCS level include the Big Sky, Ivy League, Missouri Valley, Patriot League, Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), Pioneer Football League, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), Southern and Southland Conferences, Northeast Conference, and the United Athletic Conference.
Conferences like the Coastal or Colonial Athletic Conference and Big South-Ohio Valley share status with the FCS for the sake of football. These alliances share a single berth in the FCS playoffs, which is the annual tournament used to determine the NCAA championship, a separate entity from the College Football Playoff National Championship.
If this is as clear as mud, then welcome to the club.
The playoff structure for the FCS level features automatic bids for 11 conferences with 13 at-large selections determined by the FCS Playoff Selection Committee, which consists of one athletic director from each conference with an automatic bid.
Eight teams can earn a first-round bye, and seeding for the tournament is determined by the same committee.
Who Has Won the Most FCS Championships?
The North Dakota State Bison lead the way with nine total national championships, all of which have come since 2011.
Georgia Southern is in second place with six despite departing for the FBS. Their last title came in 2000.
Youngstown State sits at third with four titles, all earned in the 1990s.
And Appalachian State rounds out the list with three from their back-to-back-to-back run of titles stretching from 2005-07.
Notable FCS teams with a championship that have migrated to the FBS level over the years include Marshall (2), James Madison (2), Western Kentucky (1), Boise State (1), Louisiana Monroe (1), and UMass (1).
South Dakota State was the last team to repeat as champions, in addition to being the latest team to win a national championship, doing so in 2022 and 2023.
Why Does The FCS Matter?
Frankly, it’s the purest level of the sport at the moment.
FCS teams lack the monster budgets of many programs at the FBS level, but as evidenced by the recent victory of the Montana State Bobcats over the New Mexico Lobos, still can compete with those who are millions of dollars ahead of them.
The FCS has the best, simplest, and most exciting playoff format in the sport. Instead of letting TV partners dictate neutral-site conference championship games, teams host first-round playoffs at home and can make dominant runs without ever catching a flight, thus, generating incredible home crowd atmospheres.
Night games in Baton Rouge will always be the creme de la creme, but a potentially snowy game with keg stands galore in the parking lot pregame makes Montana a unique alternative with an equal amount of potential for fun.
Those looking for an Alabama-esque wagon to hop on, look no further than the North Dakota State Bison.
The former home of former Wyoming coach Craig Bohl and current Kansas State coach Chris Klieman, who recently won a Big 12 Championship in 2022, the Bison ran the 2010s, reeling off nine championships since 2011. The most recent emerging threat to the Bison’s crown has been rival South Dakota State, which won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023.
The Bison have a familiar face returning to lead the program in 2024, as former offensive coordinator Tim Polasek is now the head coach. They play in one of the rowdiest atmospheres in college football at the Fargodome, or Gate City Bank Field, as the sponsors would have you call it.
The Fargodome isn’t even the most legendary dome at the FCS level, with the P1FCU Kibbie Dome, home to the Idaho Vandals, being one of the most beloved venues in the college football landscape mostly in due part to the weirdness of the structure. Few college arenas have had more stories written about it than the Kibbie Dome, despite being one of the smallest venues in the FCS.
Succinctly, all the things that make college football great are on prominent display at the FCS level. If all the recent changes to FBS football have made you nostalgic for a different era, it is hard to find a better version of college football to invest in.
You would be hard-pressed to find an area of the country without at least one FCS program nearby. It likely will cost less to attend all home games for an FCS school than it would to attend a single game for an FCS program.
Although not as shiny or dominant in the headlines, the FCS is well worth your time. After all, it’s the highest level of football for which the NCAA actually awards a national championship.
That has to mean something, right?